A mysterious video that allegedly depicts a woman from the 1930s holding a cellphone has created yet another wave of online time travel hysteria in the last week. The video, which was originally posted on YouTube a year ago, led to a string of conspiracy theories that the footage was actually a time traveler caught on film.

http://youtu.be/iasKNUhDc_w

Now a YouTube user by the name of Planetcheck claims that the time traveler in question is actually her great grandmother Gertrude Jones, testing out an early prototype of a cellphone. “She was 17 years old,” planetcheck writes. “I asked her about this video and she remembers it quite clearly. She says Dupont (the factory where she worked) had a telephone communications section in the factory. They were experimenting with wireless telephones. Gertrude and five other women were given these wireless phones to test out for a week. Gertrude is talking to one of the scientists holding another wireless phone who is off to her right as she walks by.” (Yahoo News)

Is it really possible that an early model of a cellular phone could have existed in the 1930s? This definitely raises a few questions among skeptics. For instance, why is the phone so small when cell phones in the 1980s had to be held in a briefcase? Also, why was the technology never documented? Could the device have been an early model of a walkie talkie? Even the earliest models of walkie talkies (invented in the 1940s) would have required giant batteries.

Planetcheck also claims that her grandmother still has the phone in her possession. So far there’s been no verification on any of these claims. If they turn out to be true this 1930s footage would predate the first mobile phone by 40 years.